Pro Beach Volleyball Returns to NYC With New League Format and New Location

Test
Jul 22
4 min read

by John Chuhran, MetroSports Magazine - July 22, 2025

New York, NY – As the Yankees and Mets were regrouping after baseball’s All-Star Game and players from the Giants and Jets were reporting to NFL training camp, another summer sport was returning to Manhattan after a six-year absence. But this time there was a new league format at a location that was quite unexpected.

The Association of Volleyball Professionals (AVP) staged its first competition in the Big Apple since 2019 during the July 19-20 weekend. After some brutal midweek heat and humidity, the weather lessened enough to treat spectators to an entertaining two days of a sport that screams “summer is here.”

Featuring a new format that debuted last year, the AVP now features eight teams – New York Nitro, Brooklyn Blaze, Los Angeles Launch, Palm Beach Passion, Austin Aces, San Diego Smash, Dallas Dream, and Miami Mayhem – each comprised of two men and two women. The teams compete in same-gender matches for both pairs, and both pairs on a team play two matches on a weekend.

Four teams – Nitro, Passion, Aces and Smash – competed in the NYC event, which was held at venue more famous for ice skating; the Wollman Rink, site of volleyball competition in the 1998 Goodwill Games, was transformed into a beach as 300 tons of sand was brought in by eight trucks on Thursday night and distributed around the court. With temporary grandstands and luxury suites erected around the playing field, the Central Park landmark was transformed into a summer playground in a little over 16 hours – an impressive engineering feat.

*Above: Central Park's Wollman Rink being converted to the AVP Beach Volleyball arena on Thursday night. Photo courtesy of AVP.*

Competition was intense and proved to be entertaining for the sold-out crowd and the TV audience. Last year, the AVP introduced a new format (four matches a day – two for the men, two for the women (with each game played to 15 points and a best-of-three struggle determining the winner of each match) to make the matches easier to follow for casual fans and viewers while fitting into a shorter time frame. The shorter daily schedule was a major factor in helping the AVP secure TV contracts with two networks (the CW and the CBS Sports Network) this year. Viewership in the first five official AVP league weekends has been encouraging.

*Above and Below: NYC fans turn out as a sell-out crowd to enjoy the AVP event in Central Park. Photo credit - Warren Rosenberg*

For those familiar with traditional, six-player elimination style in a tournament format, AVP Beach Volleyball represents a very different form of the game.

“They've really disrupted the beach volleyball world a little bit with the new format of the league,” said Melissa Humana-Paredes, who plays for Palm Beach and won the silver medal at the 2024 Olympics in Paris with partner Brandie Wilkerson. “I'm really excited to be part of it. It's a complete flip of the tournament-style game. Now we're playing league style. So for eight weeks straight, we have regular season games that we're playing every weekend in really cool cities, like LA, New York City, Miami. We try to win enough games to qualify for the championship in Chicago at the end of next month (August 30-31). We're really excited about that. It's a really fast paced game, and it's a lot of fun. Good Energy. There's music happening all the time. It's good personalities on the court. So I love playing it.”

Above: Olympic silver medalists and members of the Palm Beach Passion, Brandi Wilkerson (left) and Melissa Humana-Paredes (right) in Saturday night action. Photo credit - Warren Rosenberg www.nyspg.com — *Above: Olympic silver medalists and members of the Palm Beach Passion, Brandi Wilkerson (left) and Melissa Humana-Paredes (right) in Saturday night action. Photo credit - Warren Rosenberg* *www.nyspg.com*

With only two players on each side of the net and a surface that is anything but firm, the athletic challenges are substantial.

“I'm pretty new to the beach,” said Megan Rice, who pairs with Corinne Quiggle to form the female half of the New York Nitro. “I transitioned to the beach in my last two years of college (Loyola University of California) and just loved it right away. A lot of the skills were transferable, and I decided when I graduated that I wanted to keep pursuing it to the highest level. I think the biggest difference (from the traditional, six-player game) is that it has so many more elements. You're not on hard court anymore. You're in the sand, which gives more and makes it harder to move, so there's an aspect of you have to be in really great shape, whereas indoors, (it’s) a lot more position based, so you're not touching the ball as often. And when you play a specific position (indoors), you have a skill set that's really specific to that position.

Above and Below: Members of the New York Nitro, Megan Rice and Corinne Quiggle in front of the Central Park crowd. Photo credit - Warren Rosenberg www.nyspg.com — *Above and Below: Members of the New York Nitro, Megan Rice and Corinne Quiggle in front of the Central Park crowd. Photo credit - Warren Rosenberg* *www.nyspg.com*

“When you're on the beach, you have to be a very well rounded player, and you have to be good at all the skills. Attacking and hitting has been a big strength of mine, and same with passing. And so studying is something that I've had to work on. And a lot of those skills that are more specific to the beach; for instance, you're not allowed to have open hand contacts on the beach. Getting better at the intricacies and trying to transfer over as much of the skills that I did have from indoor to the beach is something I've had to develop as I've learned the sport.”